Three Sibilants, and a Distinction Speech Has Let Go

The three sibilants sit at three of the five places of articulation, palatal, retroflex and dental, and in classical Sanskrit they are fully distinct: words differ by which one appears, and the grammar states rules that convert one into another under defined conditions. In the speech of most present-day users of the Devanagari-writing languages the palatal and the retroflex have merged, so the script preserves a distinction that its readers no longer make. That situation is common in long-lived writing systems and it has a specific consequence for this atlas: a description of these letters that reported only modern pronunciation would misdescribe the classical values the letters were designed for, and one that reported only the classical values would leave a reader puzzled by what they actually hear. Both are recorded.

The absence of a labial sibilant is worth noting too, since it shows that the ushman class is not simply the sibilant row of a five-place grid: Sanskrit has sibilants at three places only, and the class is completed by h, which is not a sibilant at all but is grouped with them because it shares the continuous airflow. The table follows the sound system rather than imposing a shape on it.